Wild Shepherdess with Kate Humble – TV review

Yeah. I know I not only wrote about Wild Shepherdess with Kate Humble (BBC2) last week – after one of my colleagues wrote about it the week before – but I promised not to do so this week. I lied, though. Again. There really is nothing else on of any interest. An old episode of Sherlock? An even older Wings concert? Nah. Sorry, but it's back to Kate and her woolly friends.

More filth too, I'm afraid. She's got one of her artificial vaginas again, though this time we're in Australia so it's smarter than the Peruvian ones we saw last week. It comes in designer yellow and black, like a bee. The prize ram mounts a ewe, and quick as a flash the replacement is shoved in, tricks him, he never knows. Oh, and then it's all over. "Suddenly all the men in my life are feeling really good about themselves," says Kate. What? Oh, I see.

In the next room, another ewe, the pick of the flock, is having eggs flushed out of her. There aren't many things sillier-looking than an anaesthetised sheep lying on her back, legs in the air, on an operating table. The eggs are fertilised in a petri dish, then implanted into a genetically inferior, womb-for-rent sheep. The idea is to create a superflock.

It's fascinating. The breeding; the live shipping on special sheep-ships (ewe boats?); the progressive shepherd who's really nice to his sheep because that makes them taste better, he says; and the giant sheep station, the size of Kent, in Western Australia. Kate's time as a jillaroo, working with men in the bush, rounding up sheep using aeroplanes and motorbikes, looks like an awful lot of fun. Certainly One Man and His Dog feels tame and twee by comparison.

It's been a nice little series. Beautiful landscapes; an enthusiastic presenter, who is so much better with sheep than she was on her spice adventure (stick to what you know, and what you look a little bit like, as the old rule of presenting goes); some fine looking livestock; interesting animal husbandry in a changing world; and a whole lotta sex. What more could you want? Baaaa.